Chapter Sixty-One: The White Wedding
Winterfell
Sansa Stark
News of the marriage came as a shock to all the castle. From the girls who had taken up roles as servants to the men rebuilding the walls to the women working in the kitchens, in the embroidery rooms, and even the ones who worked beside the men, lifting stone and hefting metals as if they had been doing it all their lives. They hadn't been, but they did it all the same.
She could hardly escape the news for more than a moment. Each time she crossed the hall, she would hear word of marriage between a bastard and a dragon (a bastard dragon and a dragon, though it still stunned her to think upon such things). When her servants brought her meals, she would hear them whisper of it. When she went to the crypts to watch the stonemason carve, he would make light of it.
The knights that served them, she knew, took it as some grave offense. Arya had warned her that some sought Jon's hand for their daughters, and the ones who wished to be lords sought Daenerys' hand for themselves.
The thought had brought her a great discomfort. There were still too many questions left to be answered, and, though it seemed they would have years to answer them, she doubted they ever would.
Would she marry again? Did she need to? Would Arya? What would Jon do? What would they do with Jon's dragon? With Nymeria? What would be the succession plan, if Sansa failed to secure a suitor in time? She would need to bear an heir eventually, else House Stark would lose Winterfell when they had barely even secured it. Would she be able to bear a child? Could she lay with a man without screaming? Could she look at another man without thinking of his face? Would any man want to lay with her when her arm was as burned as Sandor's face and just as rough, just as mutilated? Would House Stark retain their friends, or would they be forgotten? Would Arya's security be enough to secure the realm's loyalty, or would they want more?
There were too many uncertainties. With every passing day, she found herself growing more and more uncomfortable.
Perhaps that was why she had locked herself away in her rooms, accompanied by only her needles and her thread. She left them occasionally, whenever she needed to tend to some strife or another, but she was always quick to return. It was calming to her, a reminder of a better time when she had sat with Septa Mordane every day and laughed with Jeyne, Beth, and all those who were gone. Mother would be outside the door, ever ready to praise Sansa's work and to call her a true and noble lady.
Everything had come so easily to her then. When she sat and did her needlework, it felt that same way again. Like the world was black and white, and all those shades of grey could fade into nothingness. Her pains slipped away, and all that was left was the satisfaction of a work made well and a favor offered in kindness.
A moon passed before she finished it. Long enough that Bran's tree had sprouted a tad. It was little more than a sapling in the snow, but it had grown enough that it scared them all, for what tree grew in winter snows? The sun still rarely rose, and most days were spent in darkness, but even that was better than it had been when none of them knew if they would face the light again.
Now she was stood outside a large white door, carved with a tree long gone even in a life long since ended. Beyond this door had been Robb's room, once. The heir to Winterfell had taken it before the three of them had gone south, when Robb had been made lord and then King. Or had he? Did he take this room? Did he let our lady mother hold it? Would he have, if he had only returned?
She took a breath. Knocked once. Twice. Three times. Four. Finally, she heard the barest creak. A piece of wood misaligned a few feet from the door. She only knew, because Robb complained about that creak every time Father caught him trying to sneak off to winter town with Theon.
Where once the memory might have crippled her, now it gave her strength. This was Winterfell. Robb's land as much as hers. Here, she was strong.
The door opened. She caught a glimpse of the walls inside – lined with red and black, as befitted a dragon queen – and no more beyond the serving girl's face. She was a young thing. Black of hair and blue of eyes, no older than Sansa had been when they'd done south. Her skin was darker than most, and her garb spoke to some Dornish descent, but she wore no sigils to mark which castle. She was pretty, though. Not beautiful, but pretty. And the second she saw Sansa, her eyes went wide as plates.
"Y-your grace," the girl said, stumbling to a knee.
"Jon?" called Daenerys from across the room
"Rise," Sansa told the girl, heedless of the once-queen's question. "If you could send for wine?"
The girl took the hint as well as could have been asked. She nodded and sprinted down the hall, leaving Sansa alone in Robb's room, while Daenerys Targaryen turned to greet her. The woman's smile faltered a bit, but it was the only thing about her that wasn't utterly perfect.
Her hair had been cut some, if only to clear away the places where fire and ash had taken hold of the strands. The servant had been braiding it before Sansa made her appearance, and, while the dressing was only half-done, the half that was done was beautiful enough. She was dressed in a gown of black and red, not unlike her walls. The dress flowed only to her ankles and no further. It was nothing like Sansa's own wedding dress. Not the first, nor the second. Instead, to Sansa's shame, it suited her far better.
There was no discomfort in the way Daenerys stood and greeted her. The thick furs on her shoulders hindered her some, but not nearly as Sansa's had at the weirwood. She even carried herself better than Sansa had, with none of the fears she had worn in King's Landing and beyond.
This is a marriage for love, she reminded herself. Of course she will ready with grace.
A terrible spike of jealousy gripped her, but she smothered it all the same. This was not her day, and nor should it be. This was for Jon. Jon and this woman who would be her cousin. This woman who had fought beside them twice. This woman who had helped protect her sister when Sansa had been afraid. This woman who had sacrificed her dragon, her army, her people. This woman who had shown her kindness, and who Sansa had answered with hatred.
"Sansa," this woman said.
She could not bring herself to say anything, except to offer her most courtly greetings. A curtsy. Daenerys fumbled to return it. Margaery was smoother than that as queen. I was smoother than that. She frowned. Margaery is dead, and I am changed. Faulty greetings… can be forgiven, when friends are proved.
Father always had said that friends in war were friends for life. Perhaps it was true. Perhaps Daenerys could be her friend, just as she was Jon's and Arya's. But Father's friends killed him, some frayed thought shouted. She did her best to ignore it. It was rather loud.
"Your Grace," Sansa said, though she wore the crown as well as her fellow had, "I thought you might like your gift early."
"You-" Daenerys said, starting forward, but then Sansa lifted her hands, and all words stopped.
The cloak was colored black – the material stolen from Jon's own, though she doubted he would mind. A few stolen streaks of red lined the edges, a color she had taken from her lady mother's own dresses. She might have saved them, if not for how the edges were burned. As it was, they were put to better use to form the legs, the wings, the three heads that would stand out against Daenerys' shoulders as the woman walked to the weirwood. And, though the main sigil stood bare against the black, there were other streaks sown throughout. White trails from one of Sansa's own dresses that formed the three dragons' eyes and which ran along the tail of the cloak, as if Daenerys had already been streaking through the snow. Grey dashes from a dress that Arya had left behind formed the interior – the part that would be shielded, but bare to Daenerys and bare to Jon in their lonesome, and the symbol would stand all the same.
Too many days had gone into this work. Now, all there was to do was watch.
If she had been worried – she would go to her grave proclaiming that she was not – Daenerys shattered that worry with two short words: "It's beautiful," she said, running a hand over each strand of red. Her finger settled on the center dragon's head, close to its ears, petting the imagined beast like a man would his dog.
"I may not fare well on the battlefield," Sansa said, not without humor, "but I do have skills of my own."
"I never doubted it," Daenerys promised. And though moons ago, she would never have believed her, Sansa found a smile pulling at her lips.
Daenerys led her to the bed, and there they both sat, staring at the cloak instead of at the other. Words escaping them as their ire bled away. Two girls who would soon be sis- cousins. Kin.
"I cannot thank you enough," the once-queen said.
"Then it is good I do not ask you to. We will be blood soon, you and I. We may as well act it."
She smiled. "I'd like that."
"I'm sorry for how I have treated you. Truly."
"You can apologize when you let me thank you," Daenerys said. "All is forgotten."
"Forgiven, not forgotten. If we forget, we will not learn." A lesson that had taken her nearly a decade to learn, but one she would never let leave her.
Her smile slipped. "And that matters to you?"
"More than you know." She thought of Ramsay, of Joffrey, of Cersei, and Littlefinger. She thought of her many mistakes and her many losses. She thought of Robb, Rickon, Bran, Father, Mother, Arya, and Jon. All lost to her, at least for a time, in part for cause of the mistakes she made. And yet… "Learning means it will not be repeated. And, though I would not change my history…"
"No?" Daenerys said suddenly, cutting off whatever speech Sansa had been close to giving.
She breathed out a sigh, content. Undisturbed. "Everything we've suffered, all of the terrible, horrible things, it all led here. The Starks hold Winterfell again. My family alive."
"But you could save more of your family. Your brothers, your mother and father…"
"And if I changed any of it, how could I guarantee that Jon, Arya, and I would still be here?" She had hardly even realized it for herself truly, but once it came – once the words reached her – she could not stop. "If I saved Father, would Arya have still learned enough to be the Kingslayer, or would we all have died in King's Landing? If I saved Robb, would Jon have left the Night's Watch? Would any of us have survived? And, if I did not return to Winterfell alone, would I stand here now? If I changed a single thing, we might all be gone, instead of most."
She didn't let herself think of the alternatives. Of a happy family and the brothers she'd lost and the father that had never fallen in front of her and the mother who still lived, breathed, and loved. That would hurt too much, so she did not dare try.
Daenerys was not the same as she. "I would," the Targaryen said, looking off at something that Sansa could not see. "To save my sons, I would change it all."
Sansa looked at her with pity. "Maybe you would, Your Grace. But I would suffer a thousand wars to see my brother and sister safe in the end."
Daenerys looked no happier to hear it. "I should finish preparing," she said, taking the cloak in her hands as she rose to return to her Myrish glass.
"As you will."
She was about to retreat when she heard the dragon call her name. A single time, and hardly more than a whisper. When Sansa turned, the words came from the white queen's mouth like a song. "Thank you."
Sansa gave a curtsy of her own – imperfect with her scarred arm still stiff as it was – but it was enough to make her cousin's bride smile. She returned it, and then she was gone.
#
The snow had taken the godswood since she had last stood on this soil. The dragon had taken to clearing it every passing morn, but they had chosen not to burn it that day, nor the day prior. No, the townsfolk might think it a bad omen if the fire spread on the day of a wedding. Best to stand in snow, as thousands of Starks before them had, and, if all went well, thousands would after.
Though, to be told true, no Starks would be born of this marriage. Little would change at all. Daenerys would retain her name, as Rhaenys had before her and Myrcella might have had she survived long enough to wed. Jon, too, would bear his own, as every other royal consort had before him.
I'll be Stark, she'd heard him tell Arya. He may have been my blood, but Rhaegar was no father.
And so it was that they were in the godswood, stood before a budding sapling that would someday become a tree worthy of the gods. A tree that would bear a Stark's face. Her brother's face.
It was Jon who stood nearest, cloaked in grey with the bastard's wolf emblazoned over his shoulders. Beside him stood Lord Reed, dressed in his finest greens, while Lady Meera crouched in the snow. She had not even bothered to clean the mud off of her face, nor exchange her crusted furs for unblemished ones. Sansa already had little love for Lady Meera, and what little there was faded by the day.
There was a sizeable crowd gathered. Some were Northerners – men of the Neck – who had thought to resume the Northern tradition and support their Queen's supposed brother. Others were Southerners, vying for favors by declaring true loyalty and love, while they struggled to make their way to the front of the procession.
Rhaegal was stood where the lake had once been, towering above them all with his wings stretched wide and smoke billowing from his nostrils. Jon had tried to comfort him twice already, but the dragon refused to abide. If it was an omen, Sansa could not say. She didn't believe in omens anymore. All she knew was that the smallfolk seemed discomforted by the beast's unease, and that was good for none of them. Yet, they would be even more discomforted if Sansa showed her worry. Instead, she continued to lead them in song as they waited for the bride.
She sung happy songs – the happiest ones she could recall. The Night That Ended, Two Hearts That Beat as One, and even the song so new, it only had the chorus: She Rose.
And soon, the songs were at an end, and the crowd was parted, and Daenerys Targaryen was stood, her hair freshly braided, her cloak freshly pinned, and her dress as white and as beautiful as the snow falling lightly around the sapling's red little leaves. Arya's smith, Gendry, stood beside her, one arm linked in her own. He, too, was dressed in his finest clothes, though they hardly compared to hers. He wore his rags (and she did too), stitched together cloths stolen from the closets of the dead, but the rags were finely made and the two were finely dressed. Hers better made. His badly stitched.
If this had been any other bride, Gendry would have been one in the crowd, if present at all. But Daenerys and Jon had little in the way of kin, and the bastard son of a Baratheon king was the closest they had to Targaryen blood. A single drop, in truth, but it was enough. After all, if Theon could give her away without an ounce of shared blood between them, then let a bastard give away a queen.
They ought not to have asked him at all, but some traditions were better kept, even while the rest changed. The rules are broken. The laws have changed. But history remains, and we will ground ourselves in it. Else we will be grounded in nothing at all, and that is a dangerous road to walk.
They walked past the crowds, none daring to say a word. One foot and then the other. One step and then another. Before long, they were stood before the weirwood, and Sansa was stepping forward, speaking the words that Roose Bolton ought never to have said to her. "Who comes before the old gods this night?"
It had been Lord Reed who ought to have taken this role, but Jon would not have it. My sister, he'd said, or no one at all.
Had Jon been his son, Father would have been proud of him. Nevertheless, he is.
Gendry cleared his throat before he spoke. His words came nervous, and not without a thousand jerks of his head and half-a-hundred broken words. "Daenerys of the House Targaryen comes here to be wed. A woman trueborn and noble." He forced the words through his teeth. The lantern in his left hand swayed. "She comes… comes to beg the blessings of the gods."
It was the best performance they could have asked for from him. Even his attending was more than Sansa had been expecting. He had spent the day insisting that he had other plans for the wedding hour, but, when Sansa pressed, there had been nothing worth nothing. Work in the smithy that could have been done by any man. Work in his rooms that could have been done at any time. Work in the yard was best done by other men at other times. Excuses. She hadn't figured out why he'd given them until now. Somehow, on the day of Jon's wedding, she had not expected to feel such guilt. Gendry delivered it in droves.
They waited. A moment, a minute. Long enough that the winds blew by the sapling, whispering little sounds that Sansa could hardly hear. And then, suddenly, Gendry jerked, remembering the line. Remembering the words. "Who comes to claim her?"
The words struck a chord in her. The wrong chord. and her fears were not eased as Jon stepped forward, one foot and then the other. But when Sansa chanced a look, there was a smile on his face and worry in his eyes. Nothing like Ramsay, she told herself. And I am nothing like Lord Roose.
"Jon of House Stark." There was a pride in the way he said it.
"Queen Daenerys," Sansa said, though she had long since abandoned the title, "do you take this man?"
She stepped forward, this once-queen. Her smile was nothing faked, and the pleasure in her eyes was no trick. She did not wait as Sansa had. She did not hesitate. No sooner was she taking that first and fateful step then she was answering, "I take this man."
It was Jon who stepped next, as if the routine had been planned and each step deliberate. It was not, and they were not. In Sansa's mind, the ceremony had been rushed. In theirs, it had been well-timed and well-planned. They would disagree when they reached the feast, surely. They hardly had the wine for a castle.
"With this kiss I pledge my love," Jon said, slowly, just as Daenerys began to speak the words in time. Their lips met, and it was none the fierce and furious thing that Sansa had faced in a bed that she could hardly call her own. They kissed as the light streamed, as snow fell lightly from the sky, and as the flames of a dragon's breath caught beneath the blinding glow of a moon too large. They moved like wind in the trees, like the crowd jeering and laughing, like the Crannogmen tapping their spears in tune to some song that only they knew. They kissed like love and war and something between. They kissed like a dragon flew and a direwolf fought. They kissed like fire.
He did not remove her cloak, as they might have in the south, and she did not take his. Though the dynasty had ended, the Targaryen name was royal enough that it would not be lost in marriage. Nor would Jon take hers. This marriage was not some game of schemes and politics and little fingers. It was a love match, and, in those, names hardly mattered at all.
She ought to have been jealous, she knew, but somehow she wasn't. After everything that had happened in this awful life they'd lived, she did not care at all. Let them be happy. Let someone be.
There would be no bedding ceremony that night, nor any playing of lion songs. The bards that had followed them North sang only Robb's songs of old and Arya's songs of new. Songs of victory and omens for better time.
They played as the crowd made their way to the Great Hall, where a chosen few had remained behind to lay out food. Rationed, of course – all food was – but enough that they could pretend it was a feast, at least for a little while. Outside the hall, there would be soup to be had for all, and a few barrels of wine to be shared. Until the seas melted, and until their trade proposals solidified into deals, they would need be careful with their resources. By the time spring came, she imagined that they would all be thin, pale, and hungry, but they would be alive, and that was all that mattered.
They had not the cloth for full banners, but a few woven cloaks had been hung in the halls. The direwolf and the dragon, each lining a different wall and greeting them all. Daenerys was smiling at the dragon, she noticed, while Jon's eyes remained on the direwolves, nodding to each in turn.
They each sat at the head of the room. Jon in the lord's chair, though it ought to have been Sansa's, and Daenerys beside him in a chair just as large. They ate from each other's plates, drank from each other's cups, and laughed and kissed at every chance they had. At a certain point, Sansa averted her eyes, if only to avoid sickening herself.
In the meanwhile, she spoke with a few of the ladies that she had come to know, and the few smallfolk women that had found their way into the sewing rooms. Alyssane japed about the motley bard's pointed ears and jingling bells, while Lady Donelle clicked her tongue, but laughed along. Down across the floor, Ser Emory was stacking empty cups on some drunken guard's skull, while the crowd roared until it toppled harmlessly into another man's meal. Even Gendry, who had only come to retrieve his and Arya's rations, seemed to enjoy himself in the fleeting moments before fled the room.
And when the time for bedding came, it was quick and short. Jon stood, Dany led him forward, and the crowd shouted their praises and- when did I start calling her Dany?
Just a few moons ago, she had been the dragon queen. A woman come to steal her home, her brother, her crown. Now, as she wed beneath Sansa's roof, it was Dany. Not the dragon queen, not usurper, not insufferable-bitch-with-dragons. Dany.
She was quiet for the rest of the night. Quiet, as the crowd funneled away, to be replaced by more hungry masses. Quiet, as she waited for a terrible song that never came. Quiet, as she watched them laugh and sing and jeer and jape. Quiet, as the bards sung the same song she had during the battle. Of Robb and wolves and living dead, though this bard had been nowhere near when she'd sung it. Quiet, when he switched to another song, of dragon's breath and a lightning lord and a dead wolf swimming in the waters.
When the drinking was done and the people slowly made their way out of the hall, three different men offered to take her back to her chambers. She refused each one, but thanked them all. When the women offered, she thanked them too. But Sansa had no plans to return to her rooms. No, not at all. There were few people left in this castle that she truly knew, and one had gone away to bed another. The third…
The third, she found in the crypts. Arms wrapped around her legs, face pressed against her knees in a manner that must have hurt. Sat before their brother's statue, staring at his face without even the slightest hint of distraction. The blue in her eyes was bright enough to give her away even in the dark of the tunnel. It seemed she hadn't bothered bringing a torch. It seemed she hadn't bothered to do much at all, really. Even when Sansa came and sat beside her, she hardly moved an inch.
For all that she must have been cold in only a jerkin and a thin pair of breaches, Arya did not shiver in her rags the way Sansa did in her furs. It discomfited her, but more than that, the floor did.
The ground was filled with dust, ash, and blood, and Sansa hated this place like any other. But the terrors she had suffered here were no worse than the terrors she had suffered in the castle above, and so she hardly even minded. She simply wiped the dust away and pursed her lips against the blood that would surely cling to her dress, because things like that always seemed to happen to Sansa. It didn't matter though. She hadn't been much of a sister when they were children, and she knew that well. This was a chance to rectify that. She could forgive dirt on her dress, if it meant repairing the wounds of days gone by.
Dried bread, meats, and roasted nuts sat on a tray beside her sister's unmoving form. She hadn't touched any of it. Sansa took the bread for herself, and Arya failed to even notice.
"Where did Gendry go?" Sansa asked, turning her attention to the same statue Arya was studying.
"Forge," she said. "I told him to."
"Why?"
She shrugged a single shoulder.
"You should have been there," Sansa said. "At the wedding. Jon missed you. Well, as much as he could have, with how much he was lusting after Daenerys."
She did not laugh the way Sansa meant her to. "Who's to say I wasn't?"
"Arya…"
She shrunk deeper into her knees. "Don't like weddings."
A thousand questions could have come from that. She could have asked why, could have mocked her for having never been to one, so how could she know? Could have mentioned Joffrey, Mother, Father, and countless other weddings that were said to have gone well. Could have told her that Westerosi weddings were different than the ones in Essos she might have seen, and were said to have involved much less blood.
She could have said all of those things or none. It didn't matter. It never did.
She matched Arya's gaze and found Robb. He stood taller than he had in life, broader, older. His gaze was strong, his jaw lined with hair, and his direwolf angrier than she had ever seen him. Ice was sat bare on Robb's lap, though he had never wielded it in life. Brienne had left one half in the ruins, and, though it was now reunited on Jon's dresser with Arya's, the blade was not whole and would never be again. We are not whole either, Sansa thought, watching the stone lines on Robb's face.
She shut her eyes and took a breath. The answer came like the Walkers had. Slowly, but ever-marching. A terrible knowledge descending on her in gentle tides, instead of one great and awful splash.
"Robb," she said.
Arya nodded. The move was jarring. But, though Sansa expected her to, she said nothing. Nothing at all.
"Joffrey was the one to tell me, you know," Sansa sighed. "I prayed so long that Robb would rescue me, that I would see him again. I thought he would win. I really did." As she watched, Arya's eyes slid shut. "I prayed night and day to the old gods and the new, but he never came. After Tyrion… I stopped expecting him to." It was something she had never spoken aloud, but something that had weighed on her for longer than it ought to have. Robb was gone, but the rest of her family was there. Her burdens did not have to be carried alone any longer. "I was right," she admitted, bitterly. "I never saw him again."
"I did."
The words felt like ice in her veins. More jarring than Arya's jerking head.
"What?"
But Arya did not move, and Arya did not answer. Her eyes hadn't left Robb. Not like Sansa's. "Is that really what he looked like?" she asked, instead. "I don't…"
"Arya?" She grabbed hold of her shoulders, all decorum lost. "When did you see him?"
"Grey Wind," Arya said. And, in spite of the cold and the scars, her voice was stronger even than it had been on Dragonstone. "I saw Grey Wind."
"No," Sansa said. "No, you didn't. Grey Wind was always with Robb. The songs-"
A horrible smile tugged at Arya's lips. The blue in her eyes, on her cheeks, on her throat, it all seemed to shine. Brighter than life. Brighter than the living. "The songs say Kingslayer caught fire when I killed the Night King, and Robb's wight called me sister."
The thought was terrible. "Could he have been-"
"Yes," Arya said. "Not Father, but Robb."
"And Rickon, and Bran, and Mother," Sansa finished for her. She took a long trembling breath.
Arya was quiet.
"When did you see him?" Sansa said. And when her sister neglected to answer, she pressed harder. "When did you see him?"
And Arya didn't answer. Not a single word.
They sat for a while. Together as one, and yet each of them alone. And when finally, Sansa looked to her, she could not help the words from slipping her tongue. "I know what you've been doing, you know?"
A thin smile tugged at her sister's lips. "Do you?"
"Mummery," Sansa said. "Pretending everything is alright. You don't have to pretend."
"It is alright."
The look she gave her was enough to scold a dragon. Somehow, it seemed to work wonders with even the Bringer of Dawn, for Arya cowed as soon as she saw it. "You know it is not. Not for any of us."
"I'm sure you did the same with Joffrey."
"As you are? Are we Joffrey?"
The smile fell away, and suddenly there was only the lost girl who'd been in the maester's turret. Freshly alive but hardly living. The same girl Jon had found at the Sept of Baelor, and the same girl Dany had found with Jorah Mormont's body.
"No," Arya whispered. "No…"
That night, Sansa returned to her rooms and pretended not to hear the sounds just beyond her chamber's walls. She laid on her bed, watched the black bricks of the black ceiling until her eyes slipped shut and her body stilled. She hoped to dream of Lady, of the true Winterfell, and of the life she'd lived and lost.
In truth, she would only dream of the Eyrie and the crypts. It was all she ever dreamt of. Even the Ramsay dreams had left her, and, though she was grateful, she would rather she simply not dream at all. Instead, there were wights. Wights and blood.
Wights tripping over each other in their haste to cut her to pieces. Tyrion wrapping his fingers around her own and whispering promises and apologies and a million things more they had never spoken of after. People screaming, bleeding, dying, crying, hurting, fighting, dying, dying, dying… Gendry's voice beyond the door. "Lady Stark! Lady Stark! Open the door! I can help! Lady Stark! Lady Stark!" Pressing herself against the boulder. Pushing and pushing, while Tyrion fought them off with his bare hands. Watching Daenerys' servant scream and fall. Watching Varys die without a word. Pushing and pushing and screaming and pushing and crying and pushing and pushing.
And then the dream would shift, and she would see a castle falling while the pain burned through her arm, while Tyrion made wordless sounds, while Sandor mocked her even as he walked to his own death. While Jon, sat atop his dragon, screamed at them – bloody and broken though he was – while Littlefinger died, while Sweetrobin died, while the good Lord Bronze Yohn died, and all the rest who had come from Winterfell.
She would dream of them, she knew. She always did. Every night, blood and death and decay.
But, be it some miracle sent from Bran or the gods, or a curse sent by the same, Sansa would not dream that night. Her eyes would not shut. Her nightmares would not come. Not a moment's rest would come to greet her and hurt her. Instead, she opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. Instead,
Knock. Knock. Knockknockknock. Knock. "Lady Sansa!" Knock. Knockknock. Knock. "Lady Sansa!" Knock.
She worried for a moment that it was Gendry, come to scream at her that he could help, but this voice was too high and too quick. A girl. Not even a woman grown.
She slid out of bed and scrambled for her robes. Her clothes were decent enough to sleep in, but surely not enough to greet a servant with, nor anyone else.
"Lady Sansa!" the girl continued to cry, while she pounded on the door.
She opened it for her, and the girl was so caught off-guard, her hand froze mid-air.
"Lady Sansa," she breathed, suddenly shaken.
"What time is it?" Sansa asked, wiping the sand from her eyes.
"I- I can't say, m'lady. Late. I have a letter!" She just about thrust it into Sansa's face. "I didn't want to wake you, but Mathis said you'll want it now. I sleep in the ravenry, see, and you don't get ravens much, but most of the time they're from King Edmure or they're from the Dorne Kings." Princes, Sansa corrected, silently. "I can usually tell from the wax, see. King Edmure has his fish, and the Dorne have their sun stick. But I saw the lion, and I grew up in King's Landing, so I knew Starks hate lions, so I thought-"
Her heart must have stopped. "Lions?"
She looked at the letter, and there it was. The Lannister lion, stood tall and pawing at the edge of his wax circle. Tyrion.
She tried to smother her smile, as the girl rambled on. "Just one, I think. I don't know what they want, but I thought it was important. Should I get the king? It was his wedding, so I thought it wouldn't be smart, and Mathis said you would want it, not him. I don't want to interrupt, or bother them, or anything. I can get your sister too. I'd love to-"
"It's alright," Sansa said. "I can tell them in the morning. Go back to the ravenry. Get some rest. We'll send a letter back tomorrow."
The girl nodded her head. "Have a nice night, m'lady."
I am a queen, Sansa thought, but did not say. "What's your name?"
"Elissa," the girl said.
"Elissa," Sansa said. "Thank you."
The girl beamed, and then she was gone, darting across the hall like an dog from a crate. She would not sleep that night, surely, but neither would Sansa.
For, no more than a moment later, she was shutting the door and cutting the letter. And, for all the control that she had gained over the years and all the work she had put into learning to mask herself, she could not stop the smile that broke on her face. Not even when the morning's light broke the shadows in her room. Not for a second.
End: Started on a high note and then dropped seven octaves. I blame Sansa. We could've visited the lord's chambers, but Sansa just haaaaad to be the POV. Least it ended nice?
Anyway, next chapter is our penultimate chapter and our last Jon, and it's sad too. Remember that majorly depressing scene I mentioned before? Yeah. Sorry. That's next time.
